Haven't updated this for some time. Maybe it's time for a musical uptick, since I'm playing a lot more and am writing new compositions.

Well, it's like this. I play the blues, I paid my dues, you can't fit in my shoes, been around, got a big sound. Free--that's me. Standards--do them all--playing them since I was small. Jazz standards, ok. Write my own stuff all the way--from simple chordal vamps and blowin' tunes to complex through-composed choral piece based on poetry of Louisa Strous Boiman and the Third Book of Moses, Lamentations--What can I say? I play--bass clarinet, clarinet, soprano and tenor saxes, flute, non-western instruments and love Irish music. As well as world music. Give me complex meter--love the Balkan stuff. Klez? African? Western and Eastern European? All cool. Into Beethoven and Bartok. Produced records with my own groups playing my own original music on my own record label, 4th Stream Records. Led Free Life Communication, a NYC musicians’ coop in NYC in the ‘70s where I met Richie, Lieb, Greg, Mike, and the best people in the city. Hung out. Different scenes—uptown and downtown.

People I used to play with have moved to the west coast (Mike Mahaffay, d), or to Boston (Laurence Cook, d), or to New Jersey (Armen Halburian, p, Badal Roy, tabla, Perry Robinson, cl.) though I think Jackson Krall is still around. I've been playing w/ many violinists (Bob Stern (NY), Mikko Mikola (Finland), Louisa Strous Boiman (Berlin)), multiple keyboardists (Richie Beirach (Germany), Greg Kogan (NY), Mark Hennen(NY)). So, really, I don't know how to explain it. I have to say, I can play, come what may.

Nuomenon Psychology: Quantum Mind

Nuomenon Psychology: Quantum Mind

In an earlier post, “Einstein’s Brain, Quantum Mind,” I explored a few ideas pertaining to ego and communication. Ego resides in space-time, mind does not. A few problems come to mind. Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity establishes frame as relative. Each of us occupies our own frame and every frame is relative to every other frame. My frame contains an ego as does yours. This accounts for some phenomena—basically I’m attempting to establish a philosophical argument that an individual cannot help but be different from another individual, no matter how similar. “My” identical twin has a different frame so “we” are not identical at the 100% level.

Mind may be a horse of different color in that minds talk to each other irregardless of space-time. Intuitive apperception meets Einstein’s definition of “spooky action at a distance.” To account for these phenomena, Jung in concert with Wolfgang Pauli devised experiments testing the external validity of what Jung named synchronicity.

Quantum physics accounts for such spookiness through mathematical equations ascribing to instantaneous communication. Called entanglement, subatomic particles can become entangled and what effects one effects the other simultaneously at faster than light (FTL) or superluminous speed.

Now there can be a metaphor for synchronicity. Entanglement, however, cannot yet be more than a rule-out mechanism for synchronous events. An hypothesis must be proved scientifically—or rather, a null hypothesis must be disproved. Entanglement is the null hypothesis. If an experiment cannot disprove the null hypothesis, in this case, Ho = entanglement X (is in identity with) synchronicity, then you cannot say that entanglement is not X synchronicity. Or, in English: entanglement X synchronicity

First I want to review some literature about this. I would refer the reader to an extensive body of material regarding ego. Ego became part of psychological nomenclature at the beginning of the 20^th c. as a result of Sigmund Freud’s epistemological and scientific expositions on “The Ego and the Id.” His ideas have mushroomed. They laid the foundation of modern psychology. Psychoanalytic techniques are referred to as “analysis” and most of our present-day understanding of ego has been experimentally substantiated using ego as a substrate. Not of all of Freudian psychoanalytic concepts are in vogue. There is plenty of room for both concrete experimentation and abstraction of original concepts.

Alongside Freud’s work coexists paranormal events, some of which were addressed by Freud himself. To include these requires a paradigm shift which some intuitive psychologists are exploring. Difficult as it may be to absolve some of these prepsychological or parapsychological concepts based on Eastern Religions and precursors of chemistry of the guilt that shadows all such endeavors to expose unconscious contents to the light, much of the progress to which I address my remarks may emerge from this primitive, preconscious substrata. In my doctoral dissertation (Intuition and Creativity) some mention of this occurs in the final discussion section. Now is the time to follow up on my speculation.

It occurs to me that for some of the following reasons, to borrow Kant’s suggestion that noumenon are the forms which cannot be perceived but which can be apprehended only through their effects upon phenomena that can be perceived, and in that sense are represented “intuitively in a non-sensible intuition ^ Critique of Pure Reason A256,B312,p273(NKS)”. This contrasts with the Platonic and scholastic debates over the differences between nuomena and phenomena for which Schopenhauer accuses Kant of missing the point (Wikipedia: Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy". Nuomena for Kant cannot be perceived, making it fit my definition of mind which corresponds with entanglement.

Nuomenon psychology catches the essence of mind in identity with entanglement, a quantum principle, specifically for the lack of precision and denial of determinacy. Nuomena are acausal and thereby fall under the rubric of synchronicity. Physics provides the metaphor of dark energy, an uncertain black hole of psychology in which unconsciousness rules. Ideas flash out the space-time continuum into a black hole of dark energy. Nuomena represent the next level, perhaps an archetypal level, which should properly contain unconscious mind. The question is whether we can rule out such an hypothesis through the mathematical precision of quantum mechanics.

Are nuomenal abstractions quantized mind, or do we resort to the use of nuomenal substrata as metaphor only? For the purposes of this discussion, I will leave it as metaphor for now, with the idea that there may be a mathematical, quantum proof of the identity in the future.

EINSTEIN’S BRAIN, QUANTUM MIND

EINSTEIN’S BRAIN, QUANTUM MIND                                                12.9.08

Keywords:  Einstein, Quantum, Richard Feynman, Wolfgang Pauli, Pauli exclusion principle, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, CBT, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, REBT, Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, Bohr, Heisenberg, John Boccio, Swarthmore College, creativity, intuition, synchronicity, chromodynamic, supersymmetry, quantum loop gravity, string theory.

            For some time I have been querying myself:  how can individual ego be of a different spacetime than other egos?  Conversely:  how can individual mind be connected to other minds? 

            Lately, these questions have been sharpened by my study of physics.  It strikes me (Aha!) that ego exists in a macro universe ruled by Einstein’s general law of relativity but mind exists in a quantum universe of entanglement which allows us to speak with one another. 

            Why differentiate?  A couple of days ago in a seminar the issue of Alzheimer’s Disease was discussed from a number of different perspectives, one of which was the brain and the other being the mind.  In a conversation I had with the presenter I broached the subject of how we each of us have a different spacetime frame from everyone else, that we carry this frame around with us, and that this accounts for our having such an individualized perspective.  On the connectivity side, we each of us can speak with one another, share dreams, and even communicate across space and time at superluminous, faster than light (FTL) speeds that can be accounted for by invoking quantum entanglement as a connectivity principle.  Why not call this Einstein’s Brain, Quantum Mind?

            True, the present-day order of physics continues to grapple with the discontinuity between the macro and the micro universe.  Different hypotheses are salient and a few (million) more are receding.  Why review string theory and super symmetry here?  Or even lapse into quantum loop gravity for that matter?  Let’s keep it simple for the rest of us psychologists—we have a brain that exists in the macro universe which is receptive to quantum connectivity.

            Many psychologists revere determinism.  That would be the causal universe of Freud.  This trends toward CBT and REBT—Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy; note the emphasis on behavior.  Behavior occurs in this world, not the next.  The next world has always reminded me of heaven and hell, the afterlife, Buddhism and karma and reincarnation, the transmigration of souls.  Yet afterlife might be reframed to include the multiverse, multidimensional strata and substrata, and quantum foam. 

            That which can be explained can be determined, and that which cannot—well the Feynmanian wave has not yet collapsed.  Feynman utilized equations that ascribed to non-determinate infinite probability.  Well, not strictly infinite probability, merely the construct that a quantum particle follows every line of probability and every path it might take prior to popping into existence when the wave of probability collapses.  The collapsing wave is a good metaphor for decision-making.  Of all the decisions one might make, the one we make occurs when the wave collapses, or, when we collapse the wave.  If one wants to believe in the principle of free will, and desires to make free will one of the considerations of what it takes to be human, this also satisfies this condition.  So quantum, Feynmanian probability makes us human and the seat of consciousness.

            That skews us to the quantum mind side of things, but it also brings us into “reality.”  Reality might be a construct that we can refer to as “existence” while the quantum mind appears to inhabit “preexistence.”  Potential, preexist, probability—all describe quantum mind.  It is the opposite of rational, logical, causal, and determinist.  Wait, could that be the sound of Jung’s synchronicity? 

            Jung and quantum mind—well let’s think.  Synchronicity was developed by Jung in collaboration with Wolfgang Pauli.  Pauli suggested that, to quote Wikipedia: “The Pauli exclusion principle is a quantum mechanical principle formulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1925. It states that no two identical fermions may occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. A more rigorous statement of this principle is that, for two identical fermions, the total wave function is anti-symmetric. For electrons in a single atom, it states that no two electrons can have the same four quantum numbers, that is, if n, l, and m_l are the same, m_s must be different such that the electrons have opposite spins.”  This is a basic concept in quantum chromomechanics.  Let us ask what this might have to do with Jung.  Pauli and Jung were in deep discussions for many years during one of the most fertile periods of Pauli’s and Jung’s theoretical development.  That is, Pauli was developing the exclusion principle and Jung the principle of synchronicity.  They write to each other for many years and a convergence of physics and psychology emerges.

            Jung had previously entered the world of physics in his article “On Psychic Energy” so he was predisposed to consider psyche from the standpoint of physics.  This attitude bore more fruit when he and Pauli synchronistically came into a relationship through the medium of another Jungian analyst.  Much of this relationship is well known and does not need further adumbration.  The point—Jung and Pauli share the concept of quantum mind.  Synchronicity, an acausal connecting principle, falls into the category of arational, acausal, wholistic, and intuitive.  Intuition, something I explored more fully in  “Intuition and Creativity,” bespeaks a high correlation with creativity.  What if creativity/intuition bespeaks a high correlation with the collapsing wave?  Reality is created by the willful collapsing of the wave by the creative psyche. 

            The artist, to paraphrase, creates reality.  There might be somewhat of a crossover between creation and procreation, especially if one views the works of Apolinaire, the cubist theoretician and poet from a slightly less than askance perspective, which throws a bit of light on the atmosphere in which Freud and Jung developed.  Nonetheless, the act of creation brings new life into the world.  What if that life exists in potentia in another world?  That might fit the definition I am proposing of creativity and the collapsing wave. 

            We are skimming here, which might be taken as surreal or superficial, yet Apolinaire, Freud, Picasso, Jung, and Pauli all have something in common—the act of creation.  My approach is to add Einstein so as to throw a light on psyche which coexists in both “our” world and the netherworld. 

            Einstein places us in a causal universe of laws which ensconce the ego as a relative frame to other egos.  It is the ultimate act of individuality to have an ego.  All reality is viewed from within the frame of the ego and all other reality, and other egos remain relative to that ego.  “I” carry around with “me” a frame of reality.  Out of that frame comes a light cone of probable action.  Action occurs at or slower than the speed of light.  “My” light cone differs from all others.  We don’t notice the difference between “our” and “other” lightcones because we humans share a virtually identical light cone; we live on the planet Earth.  Yet this explanatory principle of physics also accounts for the individuality of the ego and how ego relates causally and rationally to other egos in a deterministic universe.  

            I would never deny the existence of a deterministic universe—I just don’t exclude the possibility of other acausal non-deterministic ones.  This is where I require a quantum universe.  We don’t necessarily require a multiverse, which quantum physics cannot exclude logically.  We just don’t have to have such a messy concept which makes it possible to conceive of every possible wave collapsing to form a different pathway and thereby a different set of probability resulting in an infinite number of universes—the multiverse.  To keep it simple, we only need potential action, not reified infinite action, to account for what I am referring to as the quantum mind.

            The quantum mind, as differentiated from the mind of Einstein, is a mind of relationship, rather than a mind of relativity.  Quantum mind relates everything.  Einstein relates everything relatively.  Quantum mind considers the alternatives while Einstein’s brain considers the macrouniverse that we all believe we live in.  There are many who consider this world of Einstein to be limited.  However, psychology has had difficulty bringing them into the fold.  To consider these perspectives valid, I am invoking quantum mind. 

            Quantum mind does not require acceptance of every different perspective, no matter how we think it might be difficult to apprehend, prove, or suggest.  Quantum mind provides a perspective upon which to rest our perception of these hypothetical constructs.  They might exist in a quantum universe and if so would follow extremely explicit mathematical constructs.  Quantum physics does not accept any deviance from its mathematical constructs.  There is no discussion here.  To include what many would consider far out in the big tent of quantum mind requires subservience to what many believe to be laws of physics.  In other words, by extrapolating into questionable reality, different ideas can be put up against the hard facts of mathematical quantum mechanics or chromodynamic constructs. 

            I am not the one to do this.  I am no quantum mathematician—just ask Dr. John Boccio who taught the class at the Lifelong Learning Center of Swarthmore College in Einstein and also a course in quantum physics to us amateurs.  But I took away from Dr. Boccio the ideas generated in the magic era of Bohr, Pauli, and Heisenberg.  They are mighty and clear.  To bring into their purview psychological ideas, you have to work mighty hard.  That is why I have been so possessed.  What-if questions bombard me.  Analytical psychology accepts the need for non-specific solutions.  Freudian psychology pins everything down.  Both have a place in psychology.  Their children propagate into the future.  It is time for some accounting for both sides now.

THE UNCONSCIOUS AS A QUANTUM PROCESS

 

The other night I had a disturbing dream:  I am sitting at one of 3-4 tables, four to a table.  The king sitting at one of the other tables proclaims:  “and now we will celebrate the thrush” and everyone understands this to be a formal ceremony.  We remain seated as the hall is suddenly flooded with individuals wearing black stocking-cap masks who slit everyone’s throats as we sit there dispassionately awaiting our fate.  I see my vision change as my falls over suddenly, apparently as my own throat is slit, but I feel no pain.

 

A few days later the financial rescue plan of $700bn was proclaimed and the financial collapse of capitalism 2008 began.  I always connected the dream with the free-fall of the market—my dreams are often premonitory.  But now I am conversant with 21^st century physics—early 21^st century—and its roots so I made a different sort of connection of dream with reality.

 

Given that dreams reveal in symbol and narrative reality on very different plateaus; and given that these range from the petty to the profane, the sacred to the pagan, just how do dreams connect with everything?  The deeper question lies in the nature of intuition because dreams are one voice through which intuition expresses itself.

 

It occurs to me that one elegant hypothesis might be to rule out whether or not intuition functions in a quantum multiverse in multidimensions.  Take for instance my disturbing dream.  If dreams like these are synchronistic they will honor events but not according to the law of Humpty Dumpty—entropy.  Time being relative indicates no dream is stuck in time.  Prescience can accompany intuitive leaps, precognition, or synchronicity.  The simplest hypothesis in physics is that of Feynman—a subatomic particle may take any and ALL of the infinitely varied paths no matter the level of probability, until the probability wave collapses—then the probability of the particle becomes one:  P = 1.  A second theorem of quantum chromo dynamics establishes that of entanglement—particles may be entangled with one another and any change in one changes the other taking no time—it is not causal but occurs at FTL speed where FTL stands for Faster Than Light.  Known also as superluminousity, FTL entanglement might be the vehicle of intuition, synchronicity, and dreams of the fall of the king—in this case—King George W. Bush.  Very civilized, but lethal.

 

The big dream often affects many people and C.G. Jung advised us to tell others whenever we had one because many psyches contribute to this expression of the collective unconscious.  So the collective unconscious might be a quantum phenomenon according to this line of reasoning.  The collective unconscious is an expression of the quantum-entangled Psyche.  Psyche with a capital “P” would encompass eternity.  It is timeless.  Prophets speak in these terms.  Historians of any profession see events as interconnected and repetitive.  Why should the sages of psychology think differently?

 

To summarize:

1.  Big dreams are manifestations of a collective Psyche of entangled souls.

2.  Intuition functions in a Fenynmanian manner—there are an infinite number of probabilities until the wave collapses.

3.  The collapse represents our present-day reality.

 

This has implications for creativity.  As my dissertation research suggests, there is a robust covariance between creativity and intuition.  A creative act collapses the wave of potential and leads to further wave functions.  I play a note and other notes suggest themselves.  I play the next note, collapsing the wave and new potential notes present themselves.  Until I stop playing.  Or writing, painting, choreographing, designing . . . .  Creativity is also a quantum function, just like intuition.

 

Well, I’m ready to collapse.  The dream—the king represents the monarchy of a system that will potentially fall.  All dreams are potential—not real.  My head falls over—I have a new angle on things.  Unfortunately I am too dead to take advantage of it.  But—I’m not dead!  I’m dreaming.  Therefore—things are collapsing and we must have a new angle on things because if we don’t the Huns are gathering at the gates and civilization as we know it is DOOMED!  Or something like that.  Add your own interpretation.

Now if I could only figure out what Thrush means.  Maybe Thrush is short for my old advisor, Ranny Thrush.  So is Ranny is behind this mess!?  

MCCAIN AND OBAMA—CAN THEY COLLAPSE THE WAVE?

Can John McCain or Barack Obama master their fate?  Can they collapse the wave?  Both presumptive presidential candidates are the product and the shaper of their times.  Each has a vision and a campaign to project that vision onto present-day socio-political-economic events.  How much are they chosen to play these forces and how much can they shape them?

 Thinking about this, a “man of action” like John McCain will actually be a man of reaction.  So many of the threats he perceives result from his having been raised to think of war as service, a positive force for change, and yet a reaction to threats—real or perceived—to the security of the nation and all its special interests.  McCain is reacting to what surrounds him.  He is not a leader but a politician.  He asks everyone for advice and changes tactics on the fly.  Because of this, a negativity pervades his campaign that seeks to suppress difference, dialog, the vote, and to promote special interests.  We know what he is against far more than what he is for.  He is focused and secure relative to challenges to US authority.  He is unfocused and insecure about managing change and diversity, deferring instead to a laissez-faire market economy.  This comes from an uncreative judgmental, opinionated, and reflexive mentality.  How does this differ from the approach of Barack Obama?

A broad world-view or weltanschauung projects itself onto the cosmology of interactive forces in a dynamic flux of variants and force in the personality of Barack Obama.  There is little emotion, divisive opinionating, or reflexive reaction in the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.  A product of his time, Obama appears to enjoy being “plugged in.”  He is aware of and takes advantage of electronic media because it comprises his universe.  Obama reflects upon the energies of these interactive variables, attempts to order them in unique ways, then strips the abstraction from the conceptual fabric to reveal a clear structure, simply and clearly explicated.  The ideas are complex—their expression is not.

 By showing the public how quickly he and his campaign staff reflect, reshape, and recreate the attacks made upon him the style as well as the substance of the leadership potential Obama possesses are revealed.  The most refreshing thing to me as a political junky and a psychologist is the direct way Obama answers questions.  I can see the thought processes, the logic, the options considered, the stress on understanding, out of which emerges a nuanced and subtle approach to the multi-leveled attempts by the opposition to shape his responses.

It is more than reactivity because all of his responses come from a well thought out sub-structure alloyed with a penchant for clearly communicating what is on his mind.  This is the difficulty opponents have with him.  By understanding the pokes and jabs he feints and thrusts with authority.  Like the Jedi Knights of Lucas-lore, Obama intuitively grasps the largest situations and can move fluidly within this cosmic array in an intelligent manner.

 

In so doing, Barack belies his multi-cultural heritage and his life-experience in the Far East, Kansas, and Hawaii through his dual African-American eyes in the truest sense of the word. Obama is a first-generation African-American.  But, this sensibility is wedded to a Harvard Law education and a University of Chicago professorial focus on the American constitution.

 

If anyone can perform on the highest level with the greatest depth it is Barack Obama.  He thinks in the present with concepts birthed in the cauldron of the genesis of American democracy.  If anything, Obama is a clear counterpart to the wisdom expressed in McCain’s candidacy.  Both have merit.  Both Obama and McCain can perceive the future.  McCain represents a history of independence that has propelled the US into the 21^st century with a focus on domination.  Obama reflects the diversity of his time and the control over electronic media that will be the future heritage of our maturing nation, making it again a leader by example.  Both men are collapsing the wave of probability proclaimed by the quantum theorists to be the mechanics of creation.  It is up to the forces to redistribute themselves—but through whose eyes?

MIND SHAPES PROBABILITY

mind shapes probability

It’s been awhile since the last entry.  Life has intervened.  Time is ever-shifting, a metaphor and a fact.  We are all in a bubble.  Somewhere, sometime, different bubbles intersect and then we share a coherent spacetime with another.  Like the traveler in Einstein’s train, we are moving and not moving at the same time.  When time stands still we may be moving faster than we ever have, or so slowly it seems the event horizon stretches to beyond the blue horizon.

 The questions I have raised in this blog are speculative and limited.  Mathematics is the new language of science.  Rolled-up dimensions in a super-symmetric Calabi-Tau three-fold cannot be observed.  So I content myself with star gazing.  Luckily there is no dearth of images downloaded from earth-bound and satellite observation platforms (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/).  I can almost make out in the rain bands of our hurricanes patterns similar to galaxies shaped by forces I can only imagine.  My mind wants to see correlations between rain bands and an ego sending energy out into multidimensional spacetime.  Will the force of mind coalesce into droplets of intense focused consciously created reality?  Will what I think collapse waves of quantum energy, creating a world because I can think it?  Was Descartes correct?  This puts a spin on creativity.  Up till now I believed creativity took pre-existing elements and reshaped them into new patterns.  Why stop there? Living in a universe both macro and micro, should not even a whiff of suspicion be given to probability, a kind of Feynmanian exploration of the infinite mathematical chances a subatomic particle can enter/re-enter our universe?

What if mind shapes probability?  Just see any kung fu movie, watch any basketball game, listen to any music, look at any painting, photograph, dance, and the It (Das Es—Freud’s concept of the id) is projected onto it. We see what we want to, and the patterns emerge.  Consciousness alerts us to potential intuitively.  Is this mathematical?  It is like saying action consists of organized macroparticles, that we can “play ball” indicates a playful balance between the ball and all the tricks the hitters, runners, fielders, pitchers and catchers can do with it.  How else do you spell “momentum?”  Control is only part of momentum.  Fielding a ball is too complex for simple models—the metaphor forces break-downs when too many variables come into play and analogies no longer describe.  But mathematics may provide a way through if there is a computer fast enough to compute all the variables.  Why is it a great player must first learn to control the forces but must stop thinking to produce the best play?  As if conscious behavior can only take us so far.  To perform on the highest level an athlete or an artist may find themselves a small part of a larger energy that has the momentum to carry them along.  At this point we cannot as shapers of destiny change more than our relation to the forces.  By setting up energy, the actor shapes a continuum.  By riding a wave, a surfboarder becomes the wave.

ISE, BRANE and M-THEORY: ISE: I CHING-SYNCHRONICITY-ENTANGLEMENT

ISE, BRANE and M-THEORY
ISE: I CHING-SYNCHRONICITY-ENTANGLEMENT
By Michael Moss, Ph.D.

I have been searching for a proper metaphor. Psychology as a science; that’s one metaphor. Psychology as an art; that’s another. Or as a metaphysical spiritual quest. Or, or, or, . . . And on and on and on. I wrote a dissertation to break ground on this subject. Science got me to the point of realizing that my hypotheses are testable. Through hypothesis testing and statistics, I could state rather significantly (using stat) that creativity and intuition are pretty much the same thing. But now it is time for a further exploration that is more philosophical and ideational, and less scientific and correlational. Not to say I feel we should shy away from being scientific. Just that it is important to include science in a different metaphor that supersedes that of science. What kind of metaphor might that resemble?
Brane Theory: a sensibility built upon a structure suggested by physics. A what-if quest for truth independent of human intelligence. Mind as matter, energy, multiverse, relativity, spacetime, quantum mechanics, string theory, M-theory, brane theory. Putting together eastern mysticism, archaic methodology and Jungian synchronicity. Inclusive of ISE: I Ching-Synchronicity Entanglement.
Let’s define terms. Observe human behavior and we see a highly valid, both internally and externally, modus operandi, which is founded upon a century of psychoanalytic, behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, sociological, and anthropological verities. It is time to look beyond psyche and spirit. To balance all these disparate elements, forces, and values, a setting within something more substantial makes inherent sense to me. I ask, why not set a new way of thinking in a framework suggestive of present-day physics, just as Jung did when he was analyzing Wolfgang Pauli, a major quantum mechanics physicist? Many of Jung’s concepts come from physics, both quantum and relativity physics. Jung uses energy, action at a distance, functionality, and mysticism--ideas current in his generation--in holistic, intuitive patterns. This is why I was originally attracted to Jung’s way of thinking. It resonates with my own way of thinking. But Jung, limited as are we all by the time within which he lived, can only be just so relevant to today’s world. Einstein lived in a relativistic reality and subjected it to the most exquisite analysis to arrive at a mathematically constant symbiosis of where we are relative to where everything else is. Perhaps it is someone else’s turn to attempt to amalgamate current streams of consciousness relevant to ideas framed by current thinking in disparate realms.
Today one of the latest theories in physics has to do with multi-dimensions. String theory or M-Theory posits more than the usual number of dimensions, I.e., more than the 3+1 dimensions. We experience life in a universe that is 4-dimensional: 3-dimensional plus the dimension of time. String theory mathematically posits more than that. We live in a 10 dimensional or an 11 dimensional universe--9 or 10 spatial dimensions plus the dimension of time. The 10 dimensional universe has 4 normal dimensions plus 6 other tiny dimesnions we can’t see. Mtheory wants to say there are branes that are 11 dimensionsl. They are like mem-branes--branes for short. So we live in an 11 dimensional brane, but only see 4 of them--the rest are too tiny, or we don’t know how to see them so we just think of the usual 3+1 dimensions.
Upon reading into physics, I find the metaphor of branes to mean something applicable to psychology. Branes are mathematical examples of physics, but it seems they are similar to brains. A brane is a system of dimensions. There might be more than three dimensions plus the dimension of time in the brane within which we live. A brane can exist, sequestering a set number of dimensions, but influenced by other dimensions that are part of an overall bulk. In the bulk exist branes which follow rules of physics different from our own brane. Think of each person as a brane living in a bulk, influenced by other branes. Each of us lives in our own brane.
Einstein might see this in terms of frames. Each frame is personal and relative to every other frame. Within a frame is a spacetime that is relative to that of another frame. We each of us live in narcissistic, self-centered frames that at lower levels of consciousness relate only selfishly to other branes. But what if our brane is part of a bulk? Then we see other frames relativistically as different but equally valid. What if each frame is contained in a brane and there are different, other dimensional branes to relate to? Then each brane is influenced by forces that interact, connecting the branes, relating them one to another in a relativistic, causal manner.
The brain has segments that interact one with another. Through biochemistry, forces spread throughout the body, coordinated more or less by the central nervous system. Each of these segments relates as a frame to another frame. Complex theory (Jung) breaks down the segments into less conscious, but fully functional psychological points of view. When someone becomes less conscious, that is when a complex assumes control. Whether we call it acting out, passion, psychotic, or unconscious, different points of view/different relativistic universes collide, all within each of us, and something takes control. That center of control might be better conceived as a brane within the brain, following its own laws, in its own dimensions, communicating across the bulk to other branes, influenced by other branes. If a brane is similar to a complex, then the bulk contains all these branes and brains.
What if each brane acts not only relativistically but also through entanglement? Is the bulk somehow coordinated itself so that everything within the bulk is not only interacting relative to everything else in the bulk but is also acting at a distance? That is my surmise. Other ways of describing such “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein once described it include ancient psychological manners of thinking. Let’s include the eastern way of thinking in this mix, specifically the I Ching. According to the I Ching everything is related, not causally, but simultaneously. By using the three coins or the 50 yarrow-stalks to see what the current orientation of the universe happens to be, and by asking a question of the oracle to see how that relates to our particular orientation, people are relating across the bulk, seeing other branes, and relating to how other people relate to the bulk. This is the first principle.
A different principle, that of sychronicity, describes I Chingness in a 20th c. psychological way. Think of synchronicity as acausal and you can see how Jung was influenced by Pauli. Quantum theory describes action at a distance, i.e., entanglement, which I somehow correlates with synchronicity. Something over there is connected to something over here and somehow interacts simultaneously with that something over here. A mother wakes up with a dream of her dieing mother and finds out her mother passed away at the time of the dream. A brane over there acausally relates to a brane over here. Or if two or more coincidences appear to have a meaningful connection, Jung said that was a synchronistic event. The event puts more than one event together. One frame and another and another relate simultaneously “at a distance.” They come from different perspectives, but each, valid internally, is valid externally as well. Frames are part of a whole brane and interact across the bulk with other frames and branes. We, that is, the frame within our brane, have relatively different perspectives and time values from that of other frames in the brane. We are relatively heavy, full of energy, and affect other frames synchronistically.
The third prototype, entanglement, furthers discussion in the sense that what occurred simultaneously in one frame continues to connect, even if found across the bulk in different frames. There is an acausal, quantum connection. Entangled particles interact instantaneously as if they are the same particle. They might have started I the same place at the same time, but drifted apart until they cannot causally communicate because they are farther apart than the distance covered by the speed of light. A change to one particle changes the other faster than the speed of light. Sounds like the I Ching and synchronicity to me. All things relate to all other things are different reflections of the same thing, something described by myself as ISE--I Ching-Synchronicity-Entanglement--not just causally, acausally, and simultaneously.
As a psychologist, I observe this every day. When I go to work, every person operates or functions within their own frame. Each frame relates to every other frame relativistically. I have a point of view which if I express it verbally or nonverbal can mysteriously form within the mind of another person so that they can relate to my point of view. Granted, most of this is one narcissistic person talking to another, but relatively, each person has a frame of mind, literally existing in spacetime relative to every other frame of mind, frame of reference, FRAME. My work consists of helping people talk to each other, helping different parts of each person to talk to each other, and to help all of these relate not just relativistically, but quantumly, and synchronistically. Call it meaning making, creative, or intuitive, if I am in tune with another person, I can tune them up. We can get on the same page, speak the same language, see through each other’s eyes, step into each others’ shoes. My spirit and their spirit have spiritual intercourse. My culture and their culture can either have a culture war or a culture peace. We can conflict, resolve conflicts, be stubborn and resist change, or be change agents. Call it what you will, this psychological action at a distance is similar to multidimensionality, branes, and the bulk. If I think about it mathematically, a simple equation emerges from the chaos of existence: M-theory.
As I understand M-theory, in its present manifestation, everything is vibrating. Overtones of vibrations form matter, energy, spirit, and mind. Physicists might shudder to see how distorted I am making M-theory’s clarity of mathematical reality, but M-theory does not seem to me less than all inclusive both of spacetime, quantum reality, and what we humans call religion. Leaving God out of the equation is both unpsychological and unrealistic. We can’t see God, but we can see God’s effects. Moving on, God is the ultimate spiritual principle that includes omniscience, omnipotence, and ultimate reality. Dead or alive, God speaks. It is not to diminish God that I bring up such essence. God is a perfectly ordinary way of perceiving our world from the perspective of the entirety of existence. We hang our hat on God. God is. Why avoid an externally and internally valid principle of action at a distance? Einstein pointed out that the old man, the ultimate principality of the soul, was the relative nature of existence. But God belongs to all of us, no matter the name of God, and the here and now, the afterlife, includes the multiverse. God is there for a reason but the meaning of God appears to have something more to do with the descriptive nature of the concept. No one can tell a scientist that God can be proved. No religious person can tell me anything more than it is a question of faith. No psychologist can state that behavior, insight, and dynamic forces interact according to laws we understand. In fact, the limitations of all of the above is driving me in my own search for meaning, a quest I have been on for some time, energized by exploration into mysteries of personality, art, and being a part of something bigger than myself. If that’s not Godlike, or natural, then what is it?
For me, it is natural to think big. Everything relates to everything else. Everything is realative. How it does so is an unending source of wonder. How I feel has more to do with the exceptional friends I have, the music that I play, the compositions that I write, and the beyond thought experience of being plugged in when I abandon my ego to relate artistically to another, and another, and a group of others. Then I can see the connection. Then I can do something that expresses the whole and the whole talks back. If we are a part of an entity, then the entity contains everything in it not just in a physical way but in a mental way. We are all mental. Not just crazy mental, but mindful mental. And that mind is best described by M-theory, ISE, and will be described better in the future after we distance ourselves a bit more from the caves, from primordial unconsciousness, from believing we should physically, emotionally, and demogogically control others. It might take more work, but we can do it. We can all plug in, entangle, synchronize.